Day 35

It wasn't that he had been resigned never to have full use of that knee again, but he had heard it enough over the last month that he had been beginning to believe that the rest of his life would be a struggle against both the knee and the doctors.

Now there wasn't even a scar. He had rolled his pant leg up to check first thing—or second thing, right after watching Regis carry Reina out and staring at Clarus who was standing as if his back had never been broken.

"How are you feeling?" Clarus asked.

"Fine." Cor pulled his pant leg back into place. "But I think I'll help Regis when he strangles her."

"He knew she would push too far," Clarus said.

And probably he did. But that didn't change the fact that she was a stubborn ass and someone needed to beat some sense into her thick skull.

Cor left Clarus to share the news with his stunned daughter and followed Regis upstairs. He sat in the lounge, waiting. Ran his hands over his knee, still expecting it to hurt. An hour passed. Then two. Cor began to pace and no one snapped at him for it. His knee didn't object. More than a few calls came through over the Crownsguard radio; he largely disregarded them. Let Clarus deal with the force. Cor's job was protecting the princess, before anything else.

It was around the fourth hour when Regis finally came out of Reina's room. His hair was all but black again; it had been decades since it had been so dark. His face was the same and not. The same shape, maybe. But his skin no longer looked paper-thin and pale. He had grown that beard to hide how hollow his cheeks had become; he could have shaved the whole thing off now. Regis had commanded respect and reverence since he was hardly more than a boy. But for the last ten years it had been increasingly due to reputation. Yet here stood a man who looked as if he could hold the kingdom on his back.

"She is well enough," he said before Cor could get a word out. "Not in the least contrite."

"Did you expect her to be?"

"No." He sighed. "If I know my daughter at all, she has wanted to do something of the sort for years. Perhaps I was foolish to grant her the opportunity."

"She would have done it anyway," Cor said. "If you try to deny her she'll just go around you."

"Yes…" Regis pursed his lips.

A month ago she had been the child who never disobeyed an instruction from her father. Now she did whatever the hell she wanted, regardless of what Regis thought about it.

"Can I see her?" Cor asked.

"By all means. I would not dream of keeping you from your charge."

It sounded like he meant something besides what he said. The smile emphasized it. Didn't matter. He had said Cor could see her, and that was what he meant to do.

Down the hall, rounding the corner toward Reina's rooms, Cor nearly ran head-on into someone else. Someone who had no business at all up here.

"And here comes the princess' lion! Look at him snarl: the fierce protector!"

"The hell are you doing here?"

"Oh, much the same as you," Ardyn said, unconcerned. "Protecting my interests."

"Your interests? You've got no stake in Reina's well-being and you've got no business being around her."

Whatever else Lady Lunafreya said, no one was disputing that this man was evil. The Starscourge incarnate, she'd said, and he hadn't tried to deny it. His interests—whatever the hell he meant by that—included wiping out all life on Eos.

"Oh dear," Ardyn said. "I can see I'll make no progress here, against your narrow-minded views. Perhaps I've just come to kill everyone. Does that suit your beliefs better, Lion?"

"Get the hell out, or I'll remove you myself." Cor took a step forward.

Ardyn took one back, hands lifted. But he laughed. "Oh, I would love to see you try… some other time."

He turned and waltzed down the hall, turning the corner in the direction Cor had just come from. Cor followed after, to make sure he left, but when he rounded the corner and looked down the hall, Ardyn was gone.

How the hell…?

The only way to keep him away from Reina was to watch Reina. Watching Ardyn was pointless if he could take a step and disappear. If Cor hadn't believed he wasn't human before, he sure did now.

He turned and walked back down the hall to Reina's rooms, knocked twice on the door.

"Come in," she called from inside.

He pushed the door open cautiously. "Highness? It's me."

She was sitting upright and cross-legged in her bed, as if she had been in the process of getting up before she had been distracted.

"I know," she said. "Father doesn't knock and the servants tap."

Cor stopped in the doorway. "Regis doesn't knock?"

"I don't think it occurs to him that some doors don't belong to him. Though mostly people open doors for him, so on occasion someone will knock on his behalf. You can come in, you know. You don't have to stand in the doorway."

He stepped fully inside, but left the hall door open. There was a chair pulled up beside her bed, recently vacated by Regis, but Cor ignored it, standing beside her bed with his back to the wall instead.

"Did you come just to look after me?" She asked.

"Why else?"

"Why else," she repeated, as if in agreement. "Well, then I suppose you can accompany me to the kitchens."

"Hungry? I can send someone to bring something up for you."

She paused part way through climbing out of bed, as if this idea hadn't occurred to her. She'd lived her whole life being waited on hand and foot and it didn't occur to her that someone could bring her food on a whim. But the world had fallen apart ten years ago for her, hadn't it? There was probably a shortage of people eager to leap at her wants outside the Crown City.

Her motions resumed. "I'll do it myself."

And that was her, summed up in four words.